Fourth Sunday in Lent

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of the vacations that we would spend at Poe Valley State Park, in Pennsylvania, which I’ve mentioned previously. It’s nestled at the bottom of a steep valley, and the only way to get to it is to traverse a long dirt road that goes up one side of a mountain and down the other. The great thing about it was that because of its relative isolation, while it might fill up for the weekend, it always emptied out during the week. But the main reason we went there was because it was cheap. It cost something like $4.00 a night. That was important because 40 years ago my Dad, then a very junior member of the music faculty, was not exactly raking in the big bucks. In fact, especially when we were younger, he would often leave for a couple of days during the week to go and teach summer school. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. But there we would be: the four (and then later five) of us ensconced in our little 13-foot trailer, utilizing every sleeping space possible:  the couch-bed, the table-bed, the bunk-bed, and the hammock. 

But my parents would scrimp and save so that, every once in a great while, we could take a “big” vacation. One year, we went to New England, to Salisbury Beach, MA. It was great, because the camp sites were within walking distance of the water. This also meant that the campsites were not themselves things of great beauty. Essentially it was nothing more than a concrete slab with a picnic table beside it. And, curiously, two great big iron rings embedded in concrete, on either side of the slab. We found this to be funny, having no idea what they might be for. We found out what they were for a few days later, when a police car went rolling through the campground, advising people to tie down their trailers due to the advancing hurricane.

Everyone was saying that hurricane Belle would track up the coast, so my parents did the sensible thing and went inland. We headed for the mountains of Vermont. But Belle, didn’t follow the coast. Instead, the storm made landfall on Long Island, crossed Long Island Sound, and went up the Connecticut River into Massachusetts and right up into Vermont. 5 people in a 13-foot trailer and five inches of rain in three days. And a washed-out bridge, which meant that we were stranded. To be sure, it was not what my parents were expecting when we left Selinsgrove with our Chevy Bel Air station wagon and Scotty trailer, with visions of warm sunny beaches and historical sites dancing in our heads.

What do we do when encountering the unexpected? Or, perhaps more to the point, what do we do when our expectations of something don’t match the reality of how things are? We see two different examples of that in today’s lessons.

So, let’s start with the Gospel lesson for today:  The theme of sinfulness runs from the outset of this story through to its end. As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

That’s a kind of thinking that is still with us today. I was once visiting an older couple in the hospital. The woman had fallen and broken her hip. And her loving, devoted husband who sat by her bed the whole time, said to me, “I keep telling her she must have done something at some point, and now she’s paying the price.”

"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  Jesus’ response to the disciples’ question is totally unexpected: neither. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s an opportunity! It’s an opportunity for God’s glory to be revealed. Jesus rejects the Disciples’ interpretation of the man's blindness and sees it instead as an opening for the glory of God to be revealed. 

John uses a lot of symbolic imagery and language here. Darkness and light. Blindness and sight. The problem for the Pharisees is that Jesus does not fit into their expectations of what’s appropriate. They have a very fixed, very clear idea as to how things are supposed to be. And one thing is extraordinarily clear to them:  Healing is not supposed to be done on the Sabbath. Their expectations are firm and unbending. And why shouldn’t they be? Their expectations were firmly grounded in the law. And the Pharisees were, by far, the most fastidious observers of the law. But in their holding firm to their expectations, they miss the way God is speaking to them. At least, most of them do. Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided. From the rest of the story, however, it’s obvious that the more entrenched voices prevail. In the presence of the Son of God himself, they are blinded by their inability to let go of their expectations. In their love for God’s law, they fail to see the God who is before their very eyes. The longer the story goes on, the more they embrace the literal interpretation of the law. They hold on to it so tightly that they suffocate the love which the law was intended to express. And in the process, they suffocate themselves as well.

The story ends with Jesus' condemnation of the Pharisees, whose sin remains because unlike the man with blindness, who recognizes the grace of God in Jesus' bestowing of sight and light in his blindness, the Pharisees insist that they see and know everything already. They are closed off to the gift of Jesus, who can only give sight to those who know they are blind.

It’s actually two parallel stories: As the man with blindness progresses through the story his eyes are opened to who and what Jesus really is. The man moves from identifying his healer only as "the man called Jesus" to replying that Jesus is a prophet and then, when further pressed, that he must be from God. At the same time, the attitude of the religious authorities hardens and darkens.

As the story moves forward the emotional pitch rises. The religious authorities become more and more agitated. And when the man engages in a bit of sarcastic humor, they really get ticked off! They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" They revile him!  They drive him out of the Temple! To be driven from the Temple was literally to be cut off from God. This is why the parents of the man refused to get involved and essentially throw him under the bus when they’re confronted. Rather than “giving glory to God”, which is what the Pharisees demand of the blind man, the Pharisees deny God’s activity in their midst; all because it doesn’t fit in with their preconceived ideas as to what constitutes godly behavior.

What a contrast to Samuel in our first lesson for today. Saul, Israel’s first king was Samuel’s protégé. The thing is that Saul ended up not only being a disappointment to Samuel, but a dismal failure. He failed to follow the rules for Holy War. He and his people were instructed to destroy the Amalakites (all of them) and to destroy all of their property, keeping nothing for themselves. This they did not do. 1 Samuel 15:9 reports:  Saul and the people spared Agag [King of the Amalakites], and the best of the sheep and of the cattle and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was valuable, and would not utterly destroy them; all that was despised and worthless they utterly destroyed. God says to Samuel, “I’m sorry, I regret, I repent of having made Saul King, because he doesn’t do what I have told him to do”. And so God, and therefore Samuel, reject Saul.

Samuel must now anoint a new king. And so Samuel, relying upon past experience, expects that the practice will be the same. But in doing so, he runs the risk of being blind to the new reality that God has in mind. So, when Jesse’s oldest son, Eliab, passes before Samuel, Samuel is impressed by his physical attributes and assumes that this is the one who is to be anointed. But that’s not the case. Saul's physical stature was one of the distinctive qualities of the handsome first king who "stood head and shoulders above everyone else" (1 Samuel 9:2). But instead of picking the one who is physically most impressive, Samuel must listen for God’s voice to tell him which son is to be anointed. God instructs Samuel to unlearn his previous expectations. While Samuel looks for a king based on the model of physical stature, God teaches him to suspend human logic and trust in Divine guidance. As each successive son passes before Samuel, you can imagine the prophet's disappointment and growing desperation and with it, the desire to continue clinging to his old expectations about how things are supposed to be. He turns to Jesse, in bewilderment, and asks whether all of his sons were present. When Jesse presents his youngest son, Samuel responds obediently to God's voice, anointing David's head with oil. God did, indeed, know what God was doing. Samuel has to learn to put aside his expectations about how things are supposed to be and instead listen to God’s voice.

God continually challenges our expectations of “the way things ought to be”. Which is another way of saying that God continually challenges the church to listen for God’s voice, to see the God before it, and to celebrate that presence, that voice. If we want to see ourselves as the church, we cannot be blind to God’s presence. We cannot be deaf to God’s call. “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light-- for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord”

In other words, keep your eyes, your ears, and your minds open. Look for God. Listen for God. In both of our stories for today, God’s activity upends the status quo. And that gets some people very upset, just like it does today. And yet, that’s an intrinsic part of what it really means to be the Church. At the very least all four Gospels insist that we are living in an alternative reality that sets us apart. As the fruit of Jesus' vine, we are on display and stand for something Other. We are a community called to be rooted first and foremost in the grace and love of God: that’s what it means to be an inclusive and compassionate community. All of our thoughts, words, and deeds must flow from that one source. And as public disciples, we need to be able to articulate the theology behind our thoughts, words, and deeds. When we do that, we become instrumental in freeing the captive, giving sight to those with blind, opening the ears of those with deafness, feeding the hungry, and caring for the stranger. And we become more like the community God wants us to be. Not one slavishly devoted to tradition, shackled unbendingly to what has always been, but a community open to hearing the voice of the God who declares, “See, I am making all things new!”

AMEN